It's Time for Sustainable Progressives to Speak Up
We need to push back against the radicals before it's too late
In many ways, 2008 marked the end of three decades of right-wing times in America, and by extension, the West. 'Hope and change' was in the air, people were fed up with the 'War on terror', the religious right, and the kind of fear-based politics the Bush-43 administration represented. There was a fresh energy for embracing new ideas and improving things. Now, fast forward to 2024. Widespread 'anti-woke' sentiment has grown out of a backlash to unreasonable 'progressive' demands, and it has been weaponized by those with an authoritarian agenda to limit freedoms and rights. Anti-liberal ideologies like 'National Conservatism', Catholic Integralism, and even neoreactionism have found an audience in the context of the anti-woke backlash. In many ways, the DeSantis administration in Florida embodies this new illiberal wave, with its multiple laws restricting what can be taught in schools, its heavy handed regulation of trans health care (that has even affected adults!), its 6-week abortion ban, and its war with corporations like Disney. Many other red states have adopted at least some of this agenda. The religious right is back with a vengence in a way unimaginable even during Bush-43: abortion is now restricted or effectively banned across large parts of America, and just last week, an Alabama court torpedoed access to IVF there, with many now fearing that their own state might be next. Meanwhile, in the UK, a growing faction of the Conservative Party also want to import this kind of culture war politics, and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's lack of desire to embrace the culture wars seems to be the only thing stopping them at the moment.
So what happened? The progressives fractured and became ineffective. Some of them aimed for unrealistic ideals, and ended up paralyzed. Others went further, embracing an authoritarian, ideological program that included things like call-out culture and cancel culture, which turned many libertarian-minded people away. Still others became obsessed with postmodern critical theory that came out of academia in the 20th century, and sought to practice those flawed theories in the real world, with disastrous results. Long story short, progressivism became unsustainable, and this allowed the forces of reaction to come back in and take the wheel.
Nor is this episode unique: Western history is actually full of examples like this, the most recent being the progressive 1960s turning into the frustrating and occasionally violent 1970s, and then ultimately into the right-wing 1980s. It seems that those on the progressive side never learn anything. Well, perhaps they finally should. Because an authoritarian reactionary wave the likes we haven't seen since World War II is heading our way, and if we don't effectively resist it by providing a positive alternative, people will be harmed, and highly illiberal policies will be enacted and entrenched. This, I believe, is the biggest reason moderate progressives need to speak up and push back against the radicals, urgently.
The radicals like to say that they are intolerant of injustice in any form, and that is what differentiates them from 'centrists' like myself. I guess they mean that they are happy to allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good. To put it more bluntly, it's their way, or the highway. They would not compromise, and they don't care about the real world results of this. For example, they are committed to the idea that gender is a social construct, invented by radical feminists in the 20th century. They are going to make society accept it by trying to 'deconstruct gender' in the real world. They are not going to care that this flawed idea has led to the so-called 'TERF wars' between gender critical feminists and trans activists, leading to the defeat of both feminism and the case for trans rights. They are going to make 'transmedicalism', i.e. the traditional 'born this way' model of trans identity, taboo so that they can push their agenda through, and they're not going to care that reactionary governments are going to use their ideas as an excuse to take away trans health care rights. A similar thing happened with the 'Black Lives Matter' movement and critical race theory (CRT). They simply wouldn't allow there to be a focus on practical things like police reform and improving racial relations, which would necessitate that revolutionary philosophy like CRT and 'defund the police' be pushed aside. The result is that almost no progress has been made on racial justice, even after all the drama. This, I believe, is one of the reasons why Biden's support among black people has weakened so much, something that could ultimately pave the way for the return of Trump next year. In example after example, we can see that, for the radicals, their ideology and philosophy is everything, and they don't care how many people they harm, as long as they get to reify their ideology in the real world.
In many ways, the anti-woke movement was rooted in opposition to the radicals reifying their ideology in the real world, which would have consequences like the abolition of long-standing liberal norms. This movement included well-meaning reformists like myself, who believed an ideology over reality approach would be both illiberal and harmful for justice. In the beginning, many reasonable progressives thought that the radicals could be brought back down to the real world, if only we made it more difficult for them to be committed to their flawed ideology, simply by letting the real world's incongruency with that ideology be heard. However, we underestimated the radicals' commitment to the ideology. Faced with opposition, they simply doubled down, even if it was killing the progressive causes they said they cared about (see the examples of feminism, trans rights and BLM above). This stalemate centered on ideology, in turn, allowed the reactionaries to take control of the anti-woke movement, to turn it into an all-out, take no prisoners battle against the radicals. It takes two to tango, and we indeed have two highly ideological, out of control movements wanting to pick a fight, reminiscent of the situation of the late Weimar Republic in 1930s Germany. And we all know what happened next there. This is why we need to give it all to turn things around.
Only practical progressives, who want to solve problems and improve things in a practical (i.e. non-ideological) way, who are willing to make the necessary compromises to make progress possible, can fix the current ideological stalemate. We need to demand that people put reality before ideology in political discussions. We need to point out how 'woke' radicalism is harming the people it is supposed to help. We need to point out the flaws in postmodern critical theory ideology, and deprogram as many people as possible. We need to take a stand for free speech and individual freedom, and equally oppose attacks on freedom coming from the left and the right alike. The future of the West really depends on what we do in the next few years.
TaraElla is a singer-songwriter and author, who is the author of the Moral Libertarian Manifesto and the Moral Libertarian book series, which argue that liberalism is still the most moral and effective value system for the West.
She is also the author of The Trans Case Against Queer Theory and The TaraElla Story (her autobiography).